On-chip peripherals force down 32bit design costs

Edited by the Electronicstalk editorial team Nov 7, 2003

Two new additions to NEC's popular F-Line family of microcontrollers feature onboard CAN support and extensive onboard peripherals.

Two new additions to NEC's popular F-Line family of microcontrollers feature onboard CAN support and extensive onboard peripherals.

This is the first time NEC has offered 32bit devices in space-saving low-pin-count packages.

NEC's F-Line family consists of a variety of competitively priced devices with extensive onboard peripherals in a wide range of pin counts and memory sizes.

The new V850ES/FE2 and V850ES/FF2 offer all this for the first time in 64-pin and 80-pin packages, respectively, and with wide temperature range options capable of operation from -40 to +110C.

Based on the powerful 32bit V850ES core operating at 20MHz, with a minimum 50ns instruction cycle time, NEC's new F-Line devices offer a choice of RAM sizes from 4 to 12Kbyte and a variety of Flash and mask ROM options from 64 to 256Kbyte.

Single-voltage Flash technology allows both in-circuit and in-application programming of this series of devices.

The V850ES/FE2 offers 51 I/O ports and 10 channels of 10bit ADC.

The V850ES/FF2 has 67 I/O ports and 12 channels of 10bit ADC.

Both types have seven channels of 16bit PWM, one CAN channel and a two-channel LIN-capable UART.

NEC's F-Line features on-chip peripherals that help reduce the number of external components, thus reducing system cost and increasing system reliability.

Power-on clear (POC) monitors the external power supply during power-up and holds the reset until a secure voltage level is achieved.

This replaces an external reset device.

A low-voltage indicator (LVI) generates a reset or an interrupt when the supply voltage level drops below a defined level - this replaces an external voltage detector.

The internal ring oscillator can be used as a clock monitor to observe the main clock during operation.

It can also operate the internal watchdog timer replacing an external watchdog device.

Finally the LIN UART provides hardware support for automatic sync break field recognition and LIN wake-up without an additional interrupt pin.

This considerably reduces software development for LIN communication.

Sunrise Electronics provides complete design in support for the F-line family, including a range of development tools for this highly scalable family.

Once written for a specific F-Line device, software modules can be re-used for other devices in the family without changes.

This is possible due to the consistent re-use of core and peripheral macros in all devices, including registers and address areas.

On-chip debug facilities also reduce development times.

Similar economies are maintained for hardware design.

As the same placing has been used for the peripheral macros in all package options, designers can easily change the package without facing a complete redesign of the PCB.